Did a senior Russian embassy officer set up exchange trips to Moscow to cultivate young, up-and-coming Americans as Russian intelligence assets?

On September 30, Richard Portwood, a 27-year-old Georgetown University graduate student, received a phone call from an FBI agent who said the bureau wanted to meet with him urgently. Portwood didn't know why the FBI would have any interest in him, but two days later he sat down with a pair of agents at a coffee shop near his apartment. They told him they suspected that Yury Zaytsev, the US director of a Russian government-run cultural exchange program that Portwood had participated in, was a spy.

Since 2001, Zaytsev's organization, Rossotrudnichestvo, has footed the bill for about 130 young Americans—including political aides, nonprofit advocates, and business executives—to visit Russia. Along with Portwood, Mother Jones has spoken to two other Rossotrudnichestvo participants who were questioned by the FBI about Zaytsev, who also heads the Russian Cultural Center in Washington.

Yury Zaytsev, a Russian diplomat. Multiple sources tell us he is the subject of an extensive FBI investigation.Rossotrudnichestvo

The FBI agents "have been very up front about" their investigation into whether Zaytsev is a Russian intelligence agent, says a 24-year-old nonprofit worker whom the FBI has interviewed twice and who asked not to be identified. The FBI agents, according to this source, said, "We're investigating Yury for spying activities. We just want to know what interactions you've had with him." The nonprofit worker was shocked. Zaytsev, he says, is "what you imagine when you imagine a Russian diplomat. He's fairly stoic, tall, pale." Zaytsev did not travel on the exchange trips he helped arrange, and his contact with the Americans who went on these trips was limited.

The agents who interviewed the Rossotrudnichestvo participants did not tell them what evidence they possessed to support their suspicions. FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation into Zaytsev or answer any questions about FBI actions regarding the Russian. (The FBI did not ask Mother Jones to withhold this story.) But based on what the bureau's agents said during the interviews, the Americans who were questioned concluded the FBI suspects that Zaytsev and Rossotrudnichestvo have used the all-expenses-paid trips to Russia in an effort to cultivate young Americans as intelligence assets. (An asset could be someone who actually works with an intelligence service to gather information, or merely a contact who provides information, opinions, or gossip, not realizing it is being collected by an intelligence officer.) The nonprofit worker says the FBI agents told him that Zaytsev had identified him as a potential asset. Zaytsev or his associates, the agents said, had begun to build a file on the nonprofit worker and at least one other Rossotrudnichestvo participant who had been an adviser to an American governor.

Many countries—including the United States—place spies abroad under diplomatic cover, and it's common for law enforcement agencies to keep a close eye on foreign diplomats who might be engaged in espionage. The Americans interviewed by the FBI say the agents did not indicate whether they believed Zaytsev had succeeded in developing Americans as assets.

The FBI appears to be mounting an extensive investigation of Zaytsev. The three Americans interviewed by the FBI say the agents told them the bureau is trying to interview every American who has attended these trips. The nonprofit worker says that FBI agents went so far as to contact a married couple, who are Rossotrudnichestvo alums, while they were vacationing in Japan. He says the agents told him they were also scouring flight manifests associated with Rossotrudnichestvo trips for names that showed up repeatedly and could be Zaytsev collaborators.

All three former participants describe their Rossotrudnichestvo experience as a typical cultural exchange program, albeit a ritzy one. The organization paid for meals, travel, lodging, and every other expense associated with the trip, down to the visa fee. During the St. Petersburg leg of a June 2012 trip, participants stayed at the Sokos Hotel Palace Bridge, a luxury hotel that has hosted delegations for the G8 and G20 summits. Participants on that trip met with the governors of Moscow and St. Petersburg and with Aleksander Torshin, a high-ranking member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Since 2011, Rossotrudnichestvo has organized six trips. Most included about 25 people, although roughly 50 visited Russia during the group's first trip in December 2011.

The application process for this exchange program is simple. The application form calls for basic personal details—including the applicant’s place of work and job title—copies of the applicant's passport, and a one-page letter "briefly outlining why you should be selected, why you are interested and what interests you have in collaboration with Russia." Applicants tend to find the program through referrals. (Portwood has referred about 50 people to Rossotrudnichestvo. To his knowledge, Rossotrudnichestvo never denied any applicants.) The group also offers similar exchanges to young professionals in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Europe.

When I called the Russian Cultural Center last week, Zaytsev answered. He declined to answer questions about the FBI’s investigation on the phone, but he eagerly invited me to visit him at the center two days later. "I welcome any questions you have for me," he said. When I arrived, though, Galina Komissarova, a center employee, asked me to leave, saying I hadn't sent questions in advance as Zaytsev had requested. (He hadn't.) Komissarova would not disclose her title or role at the center. "I just clean," she said sternly, showing me the door. I discovered later that Komissarova is Zaytsev's wife.

Since then, Zaytsev has not replied to written questions or returned repeated phone calls.

A State Department spokeswoman confirms that Zaytsev is on a list of foreign mission staff who have diplomatic immunity. If it chose to, the United States could revoke his immunity, forcing Russia to call him home.

Portwood, who attended Rossotrudnichestvo trips in 2011 and 2012, and the other Americans questioned by the FBI were asked a similar set of questions. The agents wanted to know how they had heard about the exchange program and where in Russia they traveled. They also asked whether participants had encountered any anti-American sentiment on their trip, were offered jobs, or had suspicious interactions with Rossotrudnichestvo afterward. Portwood and the two other participants said they answered "no" to these questions.

According to three Rossotrudnichestvo alums, Zaytsev displayed no suspicious behavior and none developed an ongoing relationship with him after their excursion. For most Rossotrudnichestvo participants, they say, Zaytsev was merely the name on the congratulatory letter they received when they were accepted into the exchange program.

The third participant who spoke to Mother Jones about the exchange program, a 26-year-old resident of Washington, DC, is not surprised by the FBI's allegations—and doesn't care whether he was targeted as a possible intelligence asset. "There's not a single American diplomat anywhere in the American sphere of influence who doesn't have an open line of communication with the CIA. … [What Zaytsev is doing] is not something that every other single [foreign] cultural center in DC isn't also doing," he says. "And that doesn’t bother me. I don't have a security clearance. I don't work for an elected official. I run a social enterprise that has absolutely nothing to do with US-Russia relations."

Rossotrudnichestvo's most recent Russia trip was scheduled for mid-October and it's unclear whether or not it went forward as planned. After he was questioned by the FBI, Portwood emailed people he had earlier referred to the organization and discouraged them from participating. His email read, in part: "The FBI disclosed to me that Yury Zaytsev is a Russian Foreign Intelligence officer and a professional spy, acting as the Director of the Russian Cultural Center in Washington, D.C.…only so that he can maintain a residence here in the United States. In fact, the FBI alleges that part of Mr. Zaytsev's mission is sending young professionals from the United States to Russia as part of a cultural program wherein participants are evaluated and/or assessed for Russian counterintelligence purposes."

Portwood was disappointed to learn the exchange program may have been a cover for Russian intelligence work. "It passed the smell test," he says. "But I guess Russia's Russia, you know?
"

Moscow Denies U.S.-Based Diplomat Sought Young Spies

Moscow has angrily rejected allegations that one of its diplomats in Washington tried to recruit young Americans to spy for Russian intelligence agencies, calling them a “horror story” reminiscent of the Cold War.
The spy flap centering around the 59-year-old head of a Kremlin-funded cultural exchange program raises the specter of a new, potentially damaging dispute rocking already stormy relations between Russia and the U.S.

The FBI is investigating whether Yury Zaitsev, head of the Russian Center for Science and Culture, is a Russian intelligence officer who arranged all-expense-paid trips to Russia aimed at grooming young Americans, including students, political aides, nonprofit sector workers and business executives, according to Mother Jones, which first broke the story.
The Russian Embassy in Washington and Zaitsev himself denied the allegations and expressed concern that unknown people were trying to ruin efforts by Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin to expand ties.
"It's a shame that Russian-American relations periodically echo the Cold War," Zaitsev, who refused to speak to Mother Jones on the issue, said late Wednesday in an interview with state news agency Itar-Tass. “Someone apparently wants to see the iron curtain fall between our two countries once again.”
“This kind of horror story very much resembles the Cold War era,” embassy spokesman Yevgeny Khorishko said in a statement released to Russian media. “A blunt attempt is being made to distort and discredit the activities of the Russian cultural center, which focuses on developing trust and cooperation between our two countries and people.”
He warned that “somebody intends to torpedo” a goal set by Obama and Putin at a Group of Eight summit in June to expand direct contracts between Americans and Russians in order to raise U.S.-Russian relations to a new level.
But Khorishko vowed that Moscow would not be deterred by the spy allegations. ”The Russian cultural center has been working to expand contacts and improve understanding between Russian and American citizens and will continue to do this work,” he said.

The Russian center is housed in a 1895 mansion purchased by Moscow in 1957. (rccusa.org)
Mother Jones and other U.S. media reported that FBI officials have met with people who traveled to Moscow and St. Petersburg on trips organized by the Russian cultural center and quizzed them on whether Zaitsev worked for Russian intelligence and whether any attempts had been made to recruit them during their stay. The media reports, citing trip participants, said none had been approached to work for Russia.
The FBI has refused to comment on whether it has opened an investigation into Zaitsev.
Zaitsev has diplomatic immunity, so U.S. prosecutors could not press charges against him in the FBI were to conclude that he has broken the law. But the State Department could withdraw his immunity, forcing the Russian Foreign Ministry to recall him to Moscow.
The cultural center has brought 128 Americans on “short-term, fact-finding trips” to Russia since the exchange program was created under a presidential decree in 2011, according to program information on its website. The global program, which seeks participants aged 25 to 35, has also invited 1,219 people from other countries, including 283 from Europe, 157 from Asia and the Middle East, 29 from Africa and South America and 750 from other former Soviet republics.
About 25 people participated in each trip from the U.S., and they stayed at five-star hotels and met with senior politicians like the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg and Federation Council Deputy Speaker Alexander Torshin, Mother Jones said.
Zaitsev, a St. Petersburg native, said trip participants were being targeted in a “witch hunt” rooted in U.S. society's fear of Russia.
“I think this is simply unacceptable that they are ordered to tell what, why, how and why,” he said.
In a reminder of lingering suspicions in both countries, Zaitsev pointed out that the U.S. government also organizes exchange programs that bring young Russians to the United States and insisted that his program was as transparent as any of the U.S. programs.
"All of the information about our programs and projects is publicly available on our website," he said.
Zaitsev, who received a doctorate in economics from the Leningrad Technological Institute in 1980, worked in several government-run student organizations until the Soviet collapse. From 1992 until he was appointed head of the cultural center in July 2010, he worked in unspecified “leadership positions in private companies,” according to his biography on the cultural center's website. He is married and has one adult son.

The center's second floor has a space library focusing on Russian-U.S. cooperation. (rccusa.org)
Relations between the Russia and the U.S. have soured since Putin returned to the presidency last year, with Washington deploring a Kremlin crackdown on the opposition and a ban on U.S. parents adopting Russian children. Moscow for its part has assailed the U.S. Magnitsky blacklist of Russian officials accused of human rights violations.
The tensions have cast a shadow over yearlong events mean to celebrate the 80th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The Russian cultural center, also known as Rossotrudnichestvo, is “the official home of Russian culture in the United States” and was created in 2001 under a bilateral agreement aimed at fostering relations, according to its website.
It is housed in a 1895 mansion located 20 minutes by foot from the White House that the Soviet government bought in 1957 and used for the embassy's consular services for 40 years.
The first floor contains the Moscow Room, decorated in cream and gold leaf and with paintings of the Bolshoi Theater, the Kremlin, Moscow State University and Christ the Savior Cathedral; the Hall of Mirrors, with two gala portraits of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great; and the Russian-American Room, with a colorful panorama depicting key moments in Russian-American relations.
The second floor hosts the Pushkin Library, with more than 2,000 books, 300 movies on video and DVD and more than 100 audiobooks; a space library focusing on Russian-U.S. cooperation in space exploration; and classrooms where Russian-language lessons are taught.
The third floor contains two guest rooms, while the basement has a kitchen that prepares meals for the center's receptions and offers classes on Russian cuisine.

Zaitsev speaking at a cultural center event marking Russian Language Day on June 6, 2013.

Putin Hands Responsibility for Ethnic Relations to Governors

Putin speaking to religious leaders in Ufa on Tuesday before taking part in the celebrations to mark the 225th anniversary of the founding of the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia.

UFA — President Vladimir Putin has signed a law giving local authorities more responsibility for handling relations between ethnic communities in a sign that the government is growing nervous about nationalist-tinged discontent rising in Russia.
Speaking Tuesday at the Interethnic Relations Council in the Urals town of Ufa, Putin lashed out at local governments for what he said was their lackluster record in implementing the government's long-term strategy to minimize tensions among the numerous ethnic groups living in Russia.

Under the terms of the law signed Tuesday by Putin, municipal leaders will face dismissal for failing to stifle ethnic tensions.
The legislation empowers regional authorities to take measures to integrate migrants.
The law was adopted to ensure the implementation of Russia's National Ethnic Policy Strategy through to 2025, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Putin complained that little progress has been made on the strategy so far and that only nine out of Russia's 83 federal regions have forged specific plans.
"All we're talking about are plans, about the initial required measures. If we look at the specific work done, the picture is far more depressing," Putin told the Interethnic Relations Council.
Putin appeared to recognize that events in the Moscow district of Biryulyovo — where riots broke out after a Russia was stabbed to death, with an Azeri being named as a suspect — were the outcome of failure by local authorities to address local concerns, about rampant migration among other things.
"Local authorities often prefer armchair leadership, which is of little or no use," he said.
In the wake of Biryulyovo, vocal opposition candidate Alexei Navalny posted a petition on his website proposing a visa regime be introduced for migrant laborers coming to Russia from former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Putin dismissed such suggestions, saying they would do little to solve migration issues. He instead urged better bureaucratic management over migration.

A GRUDGE AGAINST THE WORLD

By Yulia Latynina

Published: October 23, 2013 (Issue # 1783)

Prominent patriot and State Duma Deputy Andrei Isayev and his aide were kicked off a plane two weeks ago for drunken shenanigans. But because the incident occurred on Russian territory, the authorities took no punitive action other than forcing Isayev to give up his symbolic post as United Russia deputy secretary.

However, when Russian diplomat to The Hague, Dmitry Borodin, got equally drunk, he landed in a Dutch jail. It all started when Borodin’s drunken wife smashed four cars just outside their home in the Netherlands. When police arrived on the scene, neighbors raised concerns about the couple’s treatment of their children. Investigating further, the police encountered the disheveled and drunken Borodin. He raised such a ruckus that his young children appeared, causing the police officers to become concerned for the minors’ safety.

Because this incident occurred on Dutch soil and not onboard a domestic Aeroflot flight, President Vladimir Putin personally demanded “apologies and punishment of those responsible.”

The psychological motive behind Moscow’s behavior is clear: the Netherlands has sued Russia for arresting Greenpeace activists, including two Dutch nationals, and Kremlin officials do not like being on the defensive. They prefer to cast themselves as victims of unjust persecution. Such behavior is characteristic of a hysterical housewife who forgot to turn off the iron and accidentally set fire to the apartment. When her husband comes home she yells, “You jerk, can’t you iron your own shirts?! This is all because of you!”

It is this attitude that I find most upsetting in the legumes-carrots-sour cream wars that Russia perpetually carries on with the outside world.

Moscow is either locked in a gas war with Kiev, bickering with Minsk over sour cream, finding fault with Norwegian salmon or raising red flags over imports of U.S. chicken. Not even a full month had passed since Russia banned Ukrainian imports before a similar spat erupted with Lithuania.

The underlying causes behind these altercations are frustratingly similar. Putin is not so much trying to resurrect the Soviet Union as he is trying to give his friends control over the industries and economies of neighboring countries. When he is frustrated in these attempts, he becomes deeply offended.

For example, the feud between Putin and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych boils down to the fact that Kremlin cronies seriously expected to be able to buy up choice Ukrainian businesses after Yanukovych came to power, but instead, Yanukovych began selling everything to his own friends.

As for Lithuania, the Kremlin is irritated over that country’s lawsuit against Gazprom. If Vilnius wins, Gazprom risks having to relinquish control over the Lithuanian gas transportation system and pay millions of dollars in compensation for inflated rates.

That lawsuit is a good example of the rule that if Putin’s foreign policy is based on enriching his closest friends at the expense of others — calling it the “restoration of Russia’s influence” — the results will inevitably backfire on him. Not only will their pockets go empty, but Russia’s influence will collapse. Such wars over sour cream and chicken legs are not only immoral, they are ineffective.

There is no better way to lose all influence over a neighbor than to repeatedly behave in an unpredictable, rude and petty manner. And there is no better way to prove that it does not pay to buy gas from Gazprom than to show the world what happens to a client that challenges its monopolistic excesses.

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

»Bukhara: A Step Back Into Ancient Uzbekistan22/10/13 20:00 from The St. Petersburg TimesBUKHARA, Uzbekistan — It was June 17, 1842, when two British army officers, Captain Charles Conolly and Lieutenant Colonel Stoddart, were dragged from the Emir’s citadel in Bukhara through the baying mob.»FSB Seeks to Increase Surveillance22/10/13 20:00 from The St. Petersburg TimesMOSCOW — A draft government order may allow the Federal Security Service, or FSB, to access all Internet communications without court permission, a policy that some observers say would violate the Constitution and could spur attempts to...»Migrants to Face Weekly Raids22/10/13 20:00 from The St. Petersburg TimesMOSCOW — In the latest step by authorities to fight unlawful immigration following an anti-migrant riot earlier this month, the city’s police chief said that Moscow police will raid apartments reportedly occupied by illegal migrants ever...

Issue #1783 (42)Wednesday, October 23, 2013

National News

Migrants to Face Weekly Raids

By Natalya Krainova

The St. Petersburg Times

MOSCOW — In the latest step by authorities to fight unlawful immigration following an anti-migrant riot earlier this month, the city’s police chief said that Moscow police will raid apartments reportedly occupied by illegal migrants every Friday until the end of the year.

The initiative, announced by top cop Anatoly Yakunin on the order of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, was promptly condemned by the head of Russia’s top migrant organization, who said it would instigate “immigrant phobia” in society. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny also ridiculed it, saying it would breed corruption — and allow illegal migrants to hide.

As the government rolls out more anti-migrant measures in reaction to the riot in Moscow’s Biryulyovo district, nationalists have stepped up their activities as well, with police preventing more than 120 activists, some armed with baseball bats, from raiding residences of migrants outside Moscow over the weekend.

As part of the operation, city police working jointly with vigilantes, private security guards and other law enforcement organizations will raid apartments where migrants are reported to be living and patrol the streets in search of migrants, Yakunin said.

About 130,000 apartments in Moscow are leased illegally, Sobyanin told the meeting, RIA Novosti reported. All of them will be examined by the year’s end, Yakunin said.

Sobyanin asked Yakunin to “reinforce this work.”

“Until we know who lives in our houses, until the major part of them are registered, there will always be serious problems with public order,” the mayor said.

The new police measures were triggered by a riot of more than a thousand local residents and nationalists last weekend in Biryulyovo to protest the stabbing death of 25-year-old Yegor Shcherbakov on Oct. 10. The rioters blamed the killing on a migrant who worked at a local vegetable warehouse.

Police later detained Azeri national Orkhan Zeinalov for the crime, and initially he admitted his guilt but on Oct. 17 rescinded the confession. On Oct. 19, Azerbaijan sent Russia the second of two notes of protest over Russian authorities’ failure to organize a meeting of Azeri diplomats with Zeinalov, Interfax reported.

Muhammad Amin Madzhumder, head of the Russian Migrants Federation, told The St. Petersburg Times on Sunday that he was “disappointed with the initiative” of police to carry out raids on migrants.

“Recently, our authorities have set a course for immigrant phobia,” Madzhumder said.

“Not only do the police hold raids but they take nationalists with them, which is a very dangerous trend,” he said, in an apparent reference to the numerous vigilante groups that participate in raids on residences where illegal migrants supposedly live and report them to police and migration officials.

In one example of coordination between the authorities and civilians in finding illegal migrants, top Moscow region migration official Oleg Molodiyevsky on Oct. 19 offered to let residents of the local town of Dolgoprudny take part in anti-migrant raids, Interfax reported.

The confusion that could be engendered by such raids was also on display over the weekend.

On Sunday, police detained five organizers of a civilian anti-migrant raid in the town of Khimki, just north of Moscow, and rounded up some 40 participants at a local park, nationalist leader Dmitry Dyomushkin told Interfax. But police later said that only three organizers were briefly detained after police mistook them for “apartment burglars,” the news agency reported.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, an outspoken proponent of stricter immigration policies, ridiculed the idea of police raiding apartments every Friday, saying it would only serve to increase corruption.

“The Interior Ministry simply made an official announcement: On Fridays, we will be visiting construction sites and markets, collecting dough. So prepare envelopes and hide migrants so that we ‘do not find’ them,” Navalny wrote Sunday on his Livejournal blog.

Anton Orekh, a commentator on radio Ekho Moskvy, said in a blog entry on Oct. 18 that he wondered whether the declared campaign meant that police “can break into any apartment.”

Some observers have accused the authorities of encouraging anti-migrant sentiment in an attempt to redirect popular discontent with government policies. In a demonstration of rising nationalist activity, authorities prevented nationalists in the Moscow region towns of Lyubertsy and Khimki from holding anti-migrant raids over the weekend, media reports said.

In Lyubertsy on Oct. 19, police detained 78 people armed with baseball bats, 60 of them minors, Interfax reported. The young people had gathered to beat migrants in reaction to the suspected beating and rape of a local woman by three Kyrgyz nationals on Oct. 17 in the neighboring district of Novokosino.

Most of the adult participants were fined for being drunk in a public place.

Putin Discusses Interethnic Relations In Ufa

President Vladimir Putin has called on Muslim clerics in Russia to get involved in educating the country's Muslims in order to prevent extremism and politicizing of Islam.

Addressing Muslim leaders at a session of the presidential Council on Interethnic Relations in Ufa, the capital of Russia's mostly Muslim Republic of Bashkortostan, on October 22, Putin also urged them to help Muslim immigrants adapt to life in Russia to reduce the likelihood of violence.

Putin was taking part in marking the 225th anniversary of the founding of Russia's Central Spiritual Council of Muslims.

The gathering in Ufa is being held amid renewed ethnic tensions across Russia triggered by the killing earlier this month of a young Muscovite, allegedly by a migrant worker from Azerbaijan.

That incident was followed by violent antimigrant rioting in Moscow.

Authorities said after an apparent suicide bombing killed at least six people on a passenger bus in Volgograd on October 21 that a young woman from Daghestan who had converted to Islam and was married to a North Caucasus insurgent leader had carried out that attack.

Putin says foreign foes use radical Islam to weaken Russia

UFA, Russia (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin accused foreign rivals on Tuesday of using radical Islam to weaken Russia and appealed to Muslim clerics to help reduce tensions after a deadly suicide bombing and nationalist riots.

The comments, his first on this month's riots in Moscow, were delivered in the mainly Muslim region of Bashkortostan and underlined Kremlin concerns that ethnic or religious tensions could threaten the unity of the Russian state.

Monday's suicide bombing, blamed on a Muslim woman from the North Caucasus, killed six people on a bus in Volgograd and raised fears about attacks as Russia prepares for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

"Some political forces use Islam, the radical currents within it ... to weaken our state and create conflicts on Russian soil that can be managed from abroad," Putin told Muslim clerics meeting in Ufa, Bashkortostan's capital, in southern Russia.

"Tensions between the West and the Islamic world are rising today, and someone is trying to gamble on that by pouring fuel on the fire," he added.

Putin did not say which foreign rivals could be fostering Islamist separatism. But he has often accused other countries, including the United States, of interfering in Russia's affairs and sought to deflect blame for problems onto other nations since securing a six-year third term as president last year.

The Moscow rioting began over suspicions that an ethnic Slav was stabbed to death by an Azeri national. Russian police later responded by rounding up hundreds of migrants.

Putin urged the clerics to help Muslim immigrants adapt to life in Russia to reduce the likelihood of such violence.

"They need to hear your voice," he said. "Otherwise they become the objects of propaganda by various fundamentalist groups."

ISLAMIST INSURGENCY

The former KGB officer became president after directing a war against separatist Muslims in power in the Chechnya region of the North Caucasus in 1999 when he was prime minister.

But Russia is still struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus and the Kremlin is concerned violence could spread to other mainly Muslim regions of Russia.

A bomb was discovered and safely detonated by Russian security forces near a trade center on Tuesday in Khasavyurt in Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, law enforcement officials said, underlining the daily threat of violence in the region.

Russia's 20 million Muslims make up around 15 percent of the population of more than 140 million, and the percentage is expected to grow.

The threat of violence spreading is a particular concern for Putin because Russia hosts the Winter Olympics in February and the soccer World Cup finals in 2018.

He has staked his reputation on hosting a safe and successful Olympics in Sochi, on the Black Sea, but has said security there is improving too slowly. Volgograd, where the female suicide bomber struck, is due to be a World Cup venue.

Attacks by insurgents from the North Caucasus include a suicide bombing at a Moscow airport that killed 37 people in 2011 and subway bombings that killed 40 in 2010.

Putin deflected any responsibility for ethnic and religious strife, putting the blame partly on local authorities which turned "a deaf ear to the people".

The president also depicted Russia as a force for peace in the Middle East at what he said was a time of meddling by other countries.

The Kremlin takes pride in a diplomatic initiative brokered with Washington last month to eliminate Syrian chemical arsenals following attacks on civilians blamed by other countries, but not Moscow, on President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia should join NATO: the benefits for the Global Security are enormous

To reformulate Lord Ismay's phrase: 1) Take Russia in, 2) Continue keeping Germany down, 3) Assert and exercise the US leadership position within the NATO as a unifying and directing force and vector.

"Ловец Человеков"

Connected? The halo is there. And the Book is there. And the disciples are there. But where is the Light of Understanding, in this big curved dark tunnel of a vision? Where is the big red dot? Where is the new beginning?

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RUSSIA and THE WEST

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West, Russia, Putin

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Hillary Clinton and rock group Pussy Riot

"Great to meet the strong & brave young women from #PussyRiot, who refuse to let their voices be silenced in #Russia. 1:09 PM - 4 Apr 2014" - Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton tweeted a picture Friday of her posing with members of the anti-Vladimir Putin punk rock group Pussy Riot. Clinton met with the women during the "Women in the World Summit" in New York. The group has emerged as chief opponents of Putin, and three members were jailed in 2012 after an anti-Putin performance at a church. The tweet has been re-tweeted almost 10,000 times.